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> I'll continue to say... as I please. By that argument, we should all just be able to say and write whatever we want however we want to, even if it's technica

by defined 10y ago

> I'll continue to say... as I please. By that argument, we should all just be able to say and write whatever we want however we want to, even if it's technically or factually incorrect, like Humpty Dumpty or Donald Trump. Why bother hewing to "elitist" rules of grammar and accepted spellings, being that it's just prescriptivism? How does one decide objectively if something is just plain wrong, or merely prescriptive? Case in point: "premises". So many people treat this singular noun as a plural and use horrors like "on-premise", which is so utterly wrong that it is painful for me to look at. What's worse is that "premise" is a real word and an entirely different thing and is most definitely not the singular of "premises". This word came about (as many English words do) as a corruption of the Latin "praemissus", meaning something like "the aforementioned", and was used often in legal agreements for properties, and so became a word in itself that meant "the property". Now we are corrupting it yet again, this time without the excuse of it being a different language, on the basis that "I'll say it however I please." People I have mentioned this to have told me that it is so difficult to get people to use the right word that they've just gone with "on-prem". Now readers can take this comment as the rant of a "grammar nazi" or a pedant, but it wasn't meant that way, and I'll respond in advance with this: why is it not ok to identify something that is wrong? Because it's mere nitpicking? Maybe so - but that's how matters devolve, over the decades, back to widespread ignorance and intolerance: one little oversight at a time. Sorry, I didn't mean to get on the soapbox - sometimes it's just frustrating for those of us who are perhaps overly detail-oriented. But the world needs "pedantic" people like us more than it likes to admit.

peteretep 10y ago
> write whatever we want > however we want to You have conflated two separate things. > being that it's just > prescriptivism The irony of course being that "being that" in the way you've used it is one of the examples of "incorrect English" given by the op. And you're using it to support the idea that these things are important... > This word came about ... as a > corruption ... without the excuse > of it being a different language You have some unorthodox ideas about how language came into being.
- defined 10y ago
  Point taken, I made a mistake, but I think you're so focused on picking apart the comment that you've ignored the meat of it. That's ok, I said my piece and expected it to be downvoted - and it was.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - 3131s 10y ago
    I'll upvote you (although technically HN doesn't like meta-commentary about upvotes / downvotes) because you made your point well. I don't have an issue with every "error" on that page and I have no problem with style guidelines for writing, but the problem comes when the prescriptivists think that logic is on their side when they opine on subjective stylistic and dialectic issues. "Ice tea" is a perfect example. The author of that site argues that "iced tea is not literally made of ice, it simply is 'iced': has ice put into it.". Apparently he is unaware of English's enormous fondness for attributive nouns. By his reasoning, we should all be saying "appled pie", or "apple-infused pie", or something crazy like that. I also have a more general problem with prescriptivism because frequently it is used to justify a certain type of racist and classist thought.
    - hueving 10y ago
      Apple pie is not the same thing as "ice tea". Apple is describing the type of pie. "ice" is not a type of tea.
      - 3131s 10y ago
        "Ice" is not a type of tea, but ice tea is a type of tea just as apple pie is a type of pie. I see no difference. Ice tea is tea with ice in it, apple pie is pie with apples in it.
        hueving 10y ago
vidarh 10y ago
What you call corruption, others call evolution. The fact of the matter is that there is no authority defining English. As a result, there is no way of objecctively deterimining if something is plain wrong. The best we can do is going by usage. You can try to influence usage, certainly, but some of those battles are simply not winnable. Note that the prominent English dictionaries have usage panels that make judgements about whether the usage of a certain form of a word is sufficiently wide as their criteria for inclusion. It's not that it is not ok to identify something as wrong, but you will need to accept that people will disagree with it, and that what is wrong to you now may very well have enough support in usage that the battle is already lost. When you then opt for comparisons to Trump, then it is not surprising that you get downvotes. A lot of the "I'll say it however I please" is down to usage. I'll drag out my favourite example: "begs the question". It's my favourite because I didn't even know about the original meaning until I started seeing rants about how horrible the new meaning was. Do a search for it today, and the results are dominated by sites complaining about how awful the change is, and articles about it. To date, I can recall only one instance where I've seen the original meaning used outside of such a rant. It's basically a lost battle, where people will often respond along the lines of "I'll say it however I please" for the simple reason that to most people the original meaning is entirely foreign because of its niche usage. Usage panels, which often lags trends like this, for good reason, have in recent years started tipping towards the new usage for "begs the question", often marking the original form as "formal", because ultimately language is about communication, and you can not communicate effectively if you pretend the most common form doesn't exist. Here [1] is an article at Merriam Webster discussing the issue. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/beg-the-question https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/beg-the-questi...
- defined 10y ago
  Yeah, look, I'm aware of language evolution (or devolution, as it may be), and that there's no formal authority for the language. I mean, there are already at least two major dialects of English (British and American), and there's enough of a difference between the two to cause problems for the unwary. What I'm railing against is more that there appears to be little interest, in general, even to try to get things right. I see this not just in human language, but in business, software development, publishing, pretty much everywhere. I'm really tired, so I'm not expressing myself as well as I should, so perhaps I should just wrap this up and get some sleep. An iPad is also not the best UI for writing on HN. Thanks for your thoughtful and thought-provoking response.
ScottBurson 10y ago
> Case in point: "premises". So many people treat this singular noun as a plural and use horrors like "on-premise" I didn't know that! Thanks!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
james_watson_ii 10y ago
You are a grammar nazi and a pedant because you have derailed the conversation as a result of your lack of understanding of the differences between formal and natural languages.
- defined 10y ago
  Sorry, I disagree. Kindly enlighten me.

by defined 10y ago

peteretep 10y ago

> write whatever we want > however we want to You have conflated two separate things. > being that it's just > prescriptivism The irony of course being that "being that" in the way you've used it is one of the examples of "incorrect English" given by the op. And you're using it to support the idea that these things are important... > This word came about ... as a > corruption ... without the excuse > of it being a different language You have some unorthodox ideas about how language came into being.

defined 10y ago
Point taken, I made a mistake, but I think you're so focused on picking apart the comment that you've ignored the meat of it. That's ok, I said my piece and expected it to be downvoted - and it was.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- 3131s 10y ago
  I'll upvote you (although technically HN doesn't like meta-commentary about upvotes / downvotes) because you made your point well. I don't have an issue with every "error" on that page and I have no problem with style guidelines for writing, but the problem comes when the prescriptivists think that logic is on their side when they opine on subjective stylistic and dialectic issues. "Ice tea" is a perfect example. The author of that site argues that "iced tea is not literally made of ice, it simply is 'iced': has ice put into it.". Apparently he is unaware of English's enormous fondness for attributive nouns. By his reasoning, we should all be saying "appled pie", or "apple-infused pie", or something crazy like that. I also have a more general problem with prescriptivism because frequently it is used to justify a certain type of racist and classist thought.
  - hueving 10y ago
    Apple pie is not the same thing as "ice tea". Apple is describing the type of pie. "ice" is not a type of tea.
    - 3131s 10y ago
      "Ice" is not a type of tea, but ice tea is a type of tea just as apple pie is a type of pie. I see no difference. Ice tea is tea with ice in it, apple pie is pie with apples in it.
      - hueving 10y ago

vidarh 10y ago

What you call corruption, others call evolution. The fact of the matter is that there is no authority defining English. As a result, there is no way of objecctively deterimining if something is plain wrong. The best we can do is going by usage. You can try to influence usage, certainly, but some of those battles are simply not winnable. Note that the prominent English dictionaries have usage panels that make judgements about whether the usage of a certain form of a word is sufficiently wide as their criteria for inclusion. It's not that it is not ok to identify something as wrong, but you will need to accept that people will disagree with it, and that what is wrong to you now may very well have enough support in usage that the battle is already lost. When you then opt for comparisons to Trump, then it is not surprising that you get downvotes. A lot of the "I'll say it however I please" is down to usage. I'll drag out my favourite example: "begs the question". It's my favourite because I didn't even know about the original meaning until I started seeing rants about how horrible the new meaning was. Do a search for it today, and the results are dominated by sites complaining about how awful the change is, and articles about it. To date, I can recall only one instance where I've seen the original meaning used outside of such a rant. It's basically a lost battle, where people will often respond along the lines of "I'll say it however I please" for the simple reason that to most people the original meaning is entirely foreign because of its niche usage. Usage panels, which often lags trends like this, for good reason, have in recent years started tipping towards the new usage for "begs the question", often marking the original form as "formal", because ultimately language is about communication, and you can not communicate effectively if you pretend the most common form doesn't exist. Here [1] is an article at Merriam Webster discussing the issue. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/beg-the-question https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/beg-the-questi...

defined 10y ago
Yeah, look, I'm aware of language evolution (or devolution, as it may be), and that there's no formal authority for the language. I mean, there are already at least two major dialects of English (British and American), and there's enough of a difference between the two to cause problems for the unwary. What I'm railing against is more that there appears to be little interest, in general, even to try to get things right. I see this not just in human language, but in business, software development, publishing, pretty much everywhere. I'm really tired, so I'm not expressing myself as well as I should, so perhaps I should just wrap this up and get some sleep. An iPad is also not the best UI for writing on HN. Thanks for your thoughtful and thought-provoking response.

ScottBurson 10y ago

> Case in point: "premises". So many people treat this singular noun as a plural and use horrors like "on-premise" I didn't know that! Thanks!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

james_watson_ii 10y ago

You are a grammar nazi and a pedant because you have derailed the conversation as a result of your lack of understanding of the differences between formal and natural languages.

defined 10y ago
Sorry, I disagree. Kindly enlighten me.